Symrise is one of the market leaders for natural ingredients and further reinforces its secure sourcing strategy in light of the increasing challenges caused by climate change and geopolitical factors. Due to the growing demand for food manufactured by sustainable means, the group focuses on continuous provision of agricultural raw materials with the aim of reducing risks in agricultural production around the world.
Sustainable Sourcing in Countering Agricultural Risks
By addressing the increasingly relevant climate change and geopolitical instability, Symrise has set a broad approach to securing sourcing of natural ingredients with a view to mitigating various risks that may disrupt the supply chain and affect quality and sufficiency in raw materials important for the food and beverage industry.
The Food & Beverage Naturals Agronomy department of Symrise started long-term risk assessment, taking into consideration a better understanding of these challenges. This long-term risk assessment presented the water scarcity, climate variability, labor availability, and land use for all fruits and vegetables under scope-mushrooms, bananas, and strawberries-predicted for 2030. With this profound risk assessment, Symrise is well on its way to creating symrise’s sustainable agricultural landscapes for the future.
“Secure Sourcing, Sustainably” Program in Practice
The insight and understanding gained from the risk analysis supported the formulation of Symrise’s “secure sourcing, sustainably” program. This initiative seeks to collaborate with farmers in transitioning to regenerative agriculture – a far more resilient form of agriculture against an increasingly unpredictable climate and market volatility. Components of this program include :
Regenerative Agriculture: Symrise collaborates with farmers to foster regenerative agriculture methods that minimize reliance on synthetic inputs, enhance biodiversity, and improve carbon sequestration. By conserving biodiversity, enhancing ecosystem services, and maintaining productive and resilient agro-ecosystems, these practices enable farmers not only to lessen negative environmental impact but also to mitigate some of the risks to profitability through fluctuating input costs-like increases in fertilizer prices.
Smart farming: the company is also taking smart farming practices to ensure that crops have more elasticity as far as adaptability to the changing climate is concerned. The identification of crop varieties that can stand harsh conditions of drought and optimization of water-use efficiency would help Symrise in having the farmers adapt to the changing climate while maintaining a steady supply of the raw material.
Success in Sustainable Sourcing: the Case of Carrots
A major success story concerning secure sourcing of Symrise is that related to the production of carrots. Even though the trend of fertilizer prices has shifted, the support from the company through regenerative farming has cushioned the production of carrots to ensure a steady supply of quality carrots. This helps not just farmers to remain profitable but also benefits food and beverage manufacturers in need of a steady supply of natural produce. Finally, the general trend in carrot farming using these sustainable practices has reduced the overall carbon footprint of carrot production, which coincides with the overall industry trend towards more sustainable agriculture.
Global Agricultural Challenges
Symrise is taking all the above-mentioned proactive approaches toward secure sourcing, which seems to be very timely. In fact, the global agro-food sector is beset by several challenges: disruption of traditional agricultural cycles due to ongoing climate change; geopolitical tensions, which also add their contribution of uncertainty to the supply chain. Besides, interest in more viable methods of food production is fostered by a growing population and increasing regulatory pressures.
Today, consumers increasingly expect a food item to be both natural and produced in a sustainable way. Herein, the Symrise secure sourcing program helps food and beverage manufacturers safely navigate the world of global agriculture to meet such consumer expectations. Symrise can help the food ingredient industry to be able to supply more products that are sustainably sourced by providing a source for ingredients that are consistently available in both high quality and a sustainable manner.
Outlook
The challenges for global agriculture are constantly changing, and Symrise will continue its secure sourcing strategy. Continuous enhancements of its risk assessment methodology, combined with cooperation with farmers on implementing innovative agricultural practices, position the company in the vanguard of natural ingredients. Long-term security of the global agro-food supply chain will be ensured by the “secure sourcing, sustainably” program.
That demonstrates the huge need for proactive risk management and practices considerate of climate change and geopolitical uncertainty. With increasingly growing demand for food produced under good conditions, Symrise’s holistic approach to securing sourcing will prove very important to satisfy both the needs of manufacturers and consumers.
Source: Symrise